West Boynton charter school goes before county commission Thursday

Parents seeking to build a charter middle and high school near the Canyons neighborhoods in unincorporated western Boynton Beach will go before the Palm Beach County Commission on Thursday morning seeking the final zoning approval they need to start building.

The commission is expected to vote on a proposed conditional use permit needed to build the 2,100 student Somerset Academy charter school on 14 acres just west of the intersection of Boynton Beach Boulevard and Lyons Road.

In connection with the school project, developer GL Homes is also asking for a number of changes to its proposed developments in west Boynton, mainly shifting around already approved development units and preserve lands in the Ag Reserve area where the county long ago created a master plan to try to balance development pressure and agricultural interests.

Earlier this month, dozens of parents wearing green T-shirts saying they supported Somserset showed up to lobby the county’s zoning commission before it voted 5-1 to recommend approving the charter school use permit. Zoning commissioner Joanne Davis was the lone dissenter.

West Boynton parents, mainly from the nearby Canyons neighborhoods, say they feel developer GL Homes promised them a neighborhood middle school when they bought their homes.

GL Homes gave the Palm Beach County School District land nearby that could be used to build a public middle school. The district said it has no plans to build a school there anytime soon because they don’t have the money and there is plenty of capacity at nearby middle schools like Odyssey Middle School less than five miles away near the intersection of Jog and Woolbright roads.

Odyssey, which was less than 70 percent full last year, had one of the highest numbers of any middle school in the county last year of children who lived in its boundary but elected to opt out to other schools. One parent, Barry Goren, complained to the zoning commission of what he claimed were problems at Odyssey that drive parents to send their kids elsewhere, though he did not go into details about the supposed problems, and said he would never send his daughter there.

Last year a group of parents tried unsuccessfully to get the school district to remove children from neighborhoods on the eastern side of Odyssey’s attendance boundary, which stretches all the way into the city of Boynton Beach. Parents claimed those children were making Odyssey Middle School dangerous. The district declined that request.

Parents told the zoning commission they also need a charter high school in the neighborhood because several years ago the school district changed the attendance zone for overcrowded Park Vista High School and sent the Canyons high schoolers 13 miles away to Olympic Heights High School near Boca Raton. Parents said that is simply too far for their children to travel to school.

Opponents at the zoning commission meeting earlier this month claimed the charter school was not needed because of the space at Odyssey and they didn’t want to see public money given to a charter school being run by a private company. They also complained about some of the preserve land shifts GL Homes is proposing near the Canyons neighborhoods.

County Commissioner Karen Marcus, who has been one of the biggest proponents of preserving agricultural land in the Ag Reserve, said she was undecided and “very conflicted” over the Somerset proposal. On one hand, Marcus said, she understood that parents wanting a neighborhood school and wishes the school district could have worked something out with the parents to give them a neighborhood school on the district-owned land.

On the other hand, Marcus said, she is nervous about all the of the other “moving pieces” shifting development units and preserve lands that GL Homes is proposing in conjunction with the school

Somerset officials have said if they get zoning approval they plan to open the school in two phases, with the first phase ready to open its doors to students by August 2013. If the county commission approves the conditional use permit the charter school still needs to have its contract with the school district approved before it can open. School District Senior Counsel Bruce Harris said the district and charter school are almost finished with negotiations and the contract would then go Somerset’s governing board and the school board for approval.

The county commission hearing is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Thursday in the county commission chambers on the sixth floor of the county government building at 301 North Olive Ave. in West Palm Beach.